
18 Strategy& | Making 5G pay
Capabilities for success in a 5G world
In combination with the right monetization models and customer-relevant use cases,
telecom operators will need a number of commercial, operational, and technical capabilities
to ensure they generate an appropriate return on their 5G investments. Four capabilities will
be especially critical.
The relative importance of each of these capabilities will depend on the way to play that an op-
erator chooses and on the business models used to execute that strategy. Telecom companies
that adopt a solution enabler or solution creator way to play will require vertical industry engage-
ment and a culture of mass collaboration.
As the 5G network is built, it will be vital
to ensure sucient spectrum across
various bands, introduce automation and
simplication to optimize operation, and
identify how to deploy the network e-
ciently at a specic level of densication
(i.e., with enough small cells to provide a
high-quality service). Will network sharing
reduce the cost to deploy 5G? And if so,
which elements should be shared? Net-
work sharing is one way for operators to
reduce costs and fast-track deployment,
as Vodafone and O2 are doing in the U.K.
The right 5G
network
Commercial
innovation
Operators will need the ability to create
or enable new services, pricing models,
and commercial partnership agreements
in days or hours rather than weeks or
months, while also leveraging data ana-
lytics and AI to ensure that their services
add value for customers and ecosystem
partners. They must ensure that their
customer service solutions can handle
the increased sophistication needed for
customers using 5G applications.
Vertical industry
engagement
Operators must develop advanced ca-
pabilities in prototyping vertical 5G use
cases and demonstrating the benets.
Other important steps will include estab-
lishing vertically focused product man-
agement, sales, and marketing functions,
as well as optimizing the CRM, solution
sales platforms, order-to-fulllment, and
post-activation support capabilities.
An ability to forge close and trusted part-
nerships with OEMs, OTT players, and
content providers will be vital to additional
monetization of 5G. This will require a col-
laborative culture put into eect through a
well-developed partner engagement and
relationship-building capability, coupled
with the ability to link into third-party
solution catalogs, jointly create bundled
products, and articulate each value prop-
osition to partners, customers, and the
wider market.
A culture of mass
collaboration